Kiza had forgotten what it felt like.

Her wings.

She had forgotten what it felt to have them on her back.

She had been very small when they ripped them off. She thinks the starkest memory she had of her wings had been when they had removed. It had been dispassionate, on the part of the skyjacker aviary commander, a man who had once carried her all the way to the infirmary after an accident where she crashed headfirst into the aviary's glass dome. The hummingbird's splice had simply just pressed a winged limb on her back, and in one single stroke ripped off both of her wings. It had bled like crazy, but Kiza had barely room to breathe let alone cry. That was what she remembered the most. The pain and the humiliation of having something that belonged to her be taken away without any emotion, without any fault on her part.

Her wings were much heavier than she remembered.

Much more. She barely remembers them, her original pair. She struggles to remember a good memory. A sweet memory with the large translucent appendages that weighed down her back and made her feel so off-center now. She can't find the memory that isn't tinged with pain, that isn't directly connected to the moment they were taken away...

And then it's there. The faintest memory of being alone, atop the skyjacker aviary, at sunset, and how she had spent hours watching the reflecting colors that would go through her wings. And how pretty it had been then. She blinks, hands pressing delicately at the heavyweight. She had barely had enough strength to hover for a short amount of time. She hadn't been strong enough then, to fly, to really fly.

And as she tried to flutter her wings, trying to work muscles she had forgotten she had, she knew she wasn't strong enough to use them.

"How do they feel?" Jupiter asked, smile wide and happy.

Kiza was laughing, even as she was crying.

"They feel wonderful."

And they did. Too heavy. Too much, but Kiza would grow stronger, and she would fly.